Abstract: Putin’s collaborators say that we should submit to him, because he threatened to destroy us. Wisdom says the opposite: we should get rid of Putin, because he threatened to destroy humanity. 80 years after Auschwitz, that should not be too hard to understand.
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International law and the United Nations recognize that “war of aggression is the ultimate crime against humanity“… Why? Precisely because war of aggression entails many other crimes against humanity.
Recognizing this after World War Two, the International Tribunal established jurisprudence: those who launch wars are the worst criminals. Putin committed the ultimate crime. (To this Putin collaborators write a fake history where reality is inverted, or invented.)
Thus, some Nazi leaders were executed “just” for promoting or enabling the Nazi war of aggression (Rosenberg, Von Ribbentrop, among others).
The concept that war of aggression was the ultimate crime was a recent development: World War Two became the massacre it was precisely because only France and the UK viewed it this way. In 1939, 1940, France, Britain (and their colonies) fought alone against Nazism.
Actually the treacherous US president and Nazifying US Congress applied sanctions against France and Britain for attacking the Nazis! Wunderbar! Result: At least 17 million civilians were assassinated in extermination camps, 100 million dead overall (as Japan felt it could get away with invading China, where it killed 40 millions).
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By September 1 1939, the pattern of Hitler attacking and invading other countries was established. As Hitler refused to stop his invasion of Poland, France and Britain declared war. Soon Russia joined Hitler in his attack on Poland, and, by November 1939, Russia invaded Finland. Afterwards, thanks to Russian oil and other resources, Hitler was able to conquer Europe, but for Britain, protected by the sea, and Hitler’s collaborators: Sweden (big time), Switzerland, and Spain.
This time the invasive Russian autocrat, perhaps encouraged by the Afghan debacle and his 6,500 nuclear weapons, has attacked rather alone: China’s autocrat, Mr. Xi may have second thoughts about the “unlimited friendship”, so no Hitler to help out, and 42 democracies have allied themselves materially with the Ukrainian democracy, constituting, de facto, a super-NATO… Against the tyran brandishing with relish the extinction of humanity, lest he gets his wayand that is, to invade countries when he feels like it, or when he thinks they are not real, or should not exist.
Pathetically, some naively argue that, precisely because Putin wants very much to kill us all, with nuclear bombs, we should surrender to him, and not irritate him in any way…. Those who know better the history of tyranny through the ages, will draw the opposite conclusion from the same facts… If you share a cage with a furious, hungry tiger, it does not matter how much you try to pet him: he will end up eating you (this has happened for real more than once). The cage we share is this planet.
Russia’s dictatorship was losing the war of the Open Society, and the more it closed itself up, the more it lost. So it went all the way down the royal road to fascism, hoping for the best, and now settling for not as good right away.
The Kremlin nuclear tyrant has many collaborators, worldwide, carrying his propaganda as if he was a nuclear Jesus. This propaganda is now becoming the most important part of Putin’s war effort. What Putin hopes is that his propaganda will undermine the long term effort of the 42 democracies opposing his dictatorship.
Indeed, those collaborators are motivated: Putin has proven generous in the past with his collaborators. Putin’s collaborators disseminate lies which fuel the sort of sympathy the Nazis weaponized for years. Much of the ephemeral victories of the Nazis, in 1936-1940 were made possible by National-Socialist propganda, which was very similar to Putin’s. That propaganda was particularly effective in France, as the French Communist Party was under the orders of Moscow, itself secretly, and then officially, collaborating with the Nazis. The result was that most new French fighter planes did not receive their armament (the military high command was afraid it would be seized by Nazi/Soviet collaborators). During the fatal week of May 10, 1940, France therefore couldn’t put in the air enough fighters.
The Kremlin nuclear tyrant fosters lies, such as Ukraine not allowing COVID vaccines (it allows six, including those allowed in the US and EU), or Ukraine closing TV stations (Putin propaganda stations also closed in the EU), or being vengeful against a past treacherous president (a Putin collaborator who violated the Ukrainian constitution, caused deaths, and is the object of national and international warrants of arrest from judicial proceedings) …
However, this is the Armageddon struggle between nuclear tyrnaical terror and the open democratic society: only the latter can be sustained on a small planet.
A first Russian officer, 21 year old, is on trial for killing a civilian. There are several witnesses, including other Russian soldiers, who were arrested with him. The officer admitted his guilt, apparently an act of madness, as he and other soldiers were fleeing after commandeering a car, consecutive to the destruction of their armored vehicles.
Evidence for thousands of war crimes is being gathered in Ukraine, by many countries, the UN and even French military war crime specialist units (NATO boots on the ground!) There is a precedent in Bosnia and Serbia of arresting war criminals who led countries and states.
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Besides repeating absurd lies on facts, Putin collaborators try to distract public opinion by points of detail, or by exhibiting a complete lack of an ethical core, a moral desert… presented as the epitome of wisdom.
It will not work this time. If the second world war had been won in 1939-1940, few would have died. It was not won, because France and Britain fought Germany, Russia/USSR, Japan and Italy in 1940, plus very bad luck. This time it’s just one fascist dictatorship against 42 democracies, which reacted promptly, this time.
History does not always repeat itself as stupidly as before. Civilization can learn, and does.
Have to do world war against a rogue nuclear armed tyranny? Do it early, before the nuclear tyrant has subjected too many minds with abject infamy.
Putin delendus est!
Patrice Ayme
The cartoon of Stalin and Hitler killing Poland was drawn on September 20, 1939. So some US citizens had a fair idea of what was going on. At the time, Britain had basically no army, so France was facing basically alone the coalition of Germany, Italy, Japan and the USSR. Hitler used massive Soviet resources to invade France… and the Soviet fifth column or threat thereof.
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In an eerie repeat of history, Russia’s Ambassador to Venezuela claimed that the Soviet Union did not invade Poland on Sept 17, 1939 and that it was in fact Poland, not the USSR, that collaborated with Nazi Germany. His explanation of how half of what was then Poland came to be under Soviet occupation is similar to the arguments of Russian liar Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.
Ambassador Vladimir Zayemsky’s delirium appeared in “Correo del Orinoco” on Sunday, Sept 20, 2015, under the title “The Truth as Historical Imperative”. This venal character pretends that there has been an increase in attempts to attribute “supposed” crimes during the Second World War to the Soviet Union, and calls Poland the worst liar. A few years later, the Putin dictatorship removed memorials to some of the massacres that the USSR committed against Poland (for example Katyn, which dozens of thousands in the Polish elite).
By engaging in what he calls a campaign of lies, Russian authorities claim that Poland tries to divert attention from its own crimes during the Second World War. Zayemsky claims that the Soviet Union did not invade Poland on Sept 17, but merely took back territory which Poland had illegally stolen. However Polish territory was settled internationally in Versailles in 1919, when Poland was made free from the German occupier.
Reality is that the Soviet Union invaded Poland, without a declaration of war, on Sept 17, 1939. This was according to the Secret Protocol to the USSR-Naziland, Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of Aug 23, 1939. Two months later, the Kremlin tyranny invaded Finland. Nine days later, the USSR was kicked out of the League of Nations…
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 